Xpeng's Turing chip saw a successful tape-out, with one chip having three times the computing power of the autonomous driving chip it currently uses.

Xpeng (NYSE: XPEV) has announced a major milestone for its in-house developed AI (artificial intelligence) chip, confirming rumors that have been circulating for some time.

The Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker announced yesterday at the launch of its new model, the Mona M03, that its first AI chip, Turing, saw a successful tape-out on August 23.

The Turing chip will be used in Xpeng's EVs, robots, and flying cars, Mr. He said.

Tape-out is a technical term used in the field of integrated circuit design, referring to the process of transforming a circuit design into a chip that can be produced on an assembly line.

After successful tape-out, the chip prototype can begin mass production if it passes subsequent tests.

Xpeng becomes the second local EV maker after Nio (NYSE: NIO) to announce progress in chip development.

Nio announced at the Nio IN 2024 tech day event in Shanghai on July 27 that it had successfully taped out its Shenji NX9031 chip.

Nio unveiled the Shenji NX9031 at Nio Day 2023 held on December 23, 2023, and the chip will be used on the ET9 executive flagship sedan, which deliveries will begin in the first quarter of 2025.

Xpeng didn't mention much technical details about the Turing chip, including its manufacturing process. Nio previously said that its Shenji NX9031 chip was built using a 5 nm process.

The Turing chip is a dedicated chip built for L4 autonomous driving capabilities, with one chip having three times the computing power of the autonomous driving chip currently used by Xpeng, Mr. He said at yesterday's event.

He didn't mention it directly, but the autonomous driving chip currently used in Xpeng models is Nvidia's Drive Orin X, with a single chip having 254 TOPS (tera operations per second) of computing power.

“We believe that only by conducting full domain and full stack research and development, including software and hardware, can we close the loop of data and handle massive data,” Mr. He said at yesterday's event.

Mr. He explained why Xpeng is developing its own chips for reasons similar to the thinking previously mentioned by William Li, founder, chairman and CEO of Nio.

The vast majority of chips offered by vendors take into account the needs of different industries, but when Xpeng undertook the design of the Turing chip, it was developed entirely based on autonomous driving considerations and based on the needs of the transformer model, he said.

The chip is only adapted to Xpeng products, including support for large AI models, Mr. He said.

The Turing chip is a highly customized chip and therefore very efficient and cost controlled, he said.

“I believe it will help Xpeng lay a very good foundation for the next generation of autonomous driving and robotics,” Mr. He said.

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